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November 12, 2026

Takeaways from the most recent news in the technology and policies shaping healthcare.

Payers

UnitedHealth Faces IRS Probe Over Foreign Subsidiary Transfers

By Healthcare Technology News ·

UnitedHealth Group is under IRS scrutiny for transactions involving its foreign subsidiaries, a dispute that could sharply raise the insurer's tax bill, according to STAT News. The probe centers on how the company moved value across international units, a practice known as transfer pricing that multinational firms use to allocate income and expenses between jurisdictions with different tax rates.

The core question is whether those transfers were structured to reduce what UnitedHealth owed in US taxes. If the IRS concludes the arrangements understated the company's domestic income, UnitedHealth could face a substantial back-tax obligation plus potential penalties.

The scrutiny lands as UnitedHealth, the largest US health insurer and parent of Optum, is already navigating regulatory and legal pressure on multiple fronts. Transfer-pricing disputes are common among large multinationals and often stretch on for years before resolution, so any final financial impact may not be clear for some time.

Sources

More in Payers

Payers

Hospitals Split on Owning Health Plans as Systems Exit

Several large health systems have sold or closed their insurance arms in the past two years, exposing a widening divide over whether providers should own health plans.

Why it matters: Whether a hospital owns an insurer shapes its revenue, risk, and leverage against payers, making it one of the defining strategic bets in healthcare.

Payers

Humana, Athenahealth Expand Electronic Prior Authorization

Humana and Athenahealth are scaling electronic prior authorization across 180,000-plus clinicians, with most September transactions requiring no manual staff work.

Why it matters: Prior authorization is a leading driver of provider burnout and administrative cost, and automation embedded in the EHR is how new federal mandates get put into practice.

Payers

How Health Plans Tell If Their Payment Ops Can Scale

Health plans can gauge whether their payment operations can truly scale by watching exception volume, return rates, and digital payment share as transaction counts rise.

Why it matters: Payment infrastructure that fails under growth drives up administrative costs and strains provider relationships just as a plan expands.